


Under Moonlight

by RoSH (RoSH95)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam is only briefly mentioned, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Keith is a star, M/M, it was a prompt war, it was not my idea, no literally, sorry Adam fans, this is the fluffiest sappiest bullshit you will ever catch me writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 22:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoSH95/pseuds/RoSH
Summary: He opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is a swathe of purpleblueblack, sprinkled with glittering diamonds.His name is Carina, and he is a fallen star.~In which Keith is the star, Carina, and he and Shiro are soulmates





	Under Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> I just want you all to know that I had no say in this.
> 
> Prompt: When people are born, they have a streak of hair the same color and texture as their soulmate's natural hair. You are born with a blue streak that floats in the air, and no matter what you do you can't get it to lay flat on your head. (courtesy of writing-prompt-s on tumblr)
> 
> Over the summer, a lady I work with and I engaged in a friendly prompt off. This was the first prompt she chose and the only way I could get myself to write something so sappy and romantic was to make it Sheith. 
> 
> So have at it.

The first thing he’s aware of is the heat of his star-bright soul guttering out as he hurtles through space at high velocity, feeling weightless in the freefall. And then his dead husk makes impact with the unforgiving earth and shatters, splitting open and spilling him out onto the sand.

And then he is aware of everything all at once, his new body, the chill of the air, the sharp rock digging into his soft shell, each individual grain of sand beneath him. He has lungs that breathe, a heart the beats, and blood that flows; he has four limbs that he can move individually; he has a mouth that tastes, a nose that smells, ears that hear, and eyes that see. It’s familiar and yet wholly new all at once.

He opens his eyes and the first thing he sees is a swathe of purpleblueblack, sprinkled with glittering diamonds.

His name is Carina, and he is a fallen star.

~

Shiro wakes with a cry of pain, feeling like his head is on fire. He digs his fingers into his eye sockets, but it does nothing to dull the pain. A spike of pain through the top of his head sends Shiro tumbling out of bed and stumbling blindly into the bathroom.

He braces his hands against the cool porcelain sink, pressing his forehead against the basin and turning on the faucet to pour cold water over his head.

The rush of water beats back the migraine until it curls, throbbing, in the back of his head, allowing Shiro to look up at his reflection. He sees ink black hair plastered to his flushed and sweaty forehead, stormy gray eyes slightly glazed, his bottom lip bright pink from chewing on it unconsciously as he fought through the pain. A streak of silver hair hanging over his eyes, slowly bleeding black.

_A streak of silver hair slowly bleeding black_.

Shiro jerks back from the mirror, his hand flying up to press against the streak, as if he can stop his soulmate’s death just through sheer force of _will_.

“ _No_ ,” he says, pleads, watching the black color drip down the strands of silver. “No, _please_.”

He hasn’t even met them yet, even though he’s been searching all his life. He’s barely out of college, halfway across the world from his family because the Aeronautical University in Phoenix, Arizona far outstrips anything offered back home.

Naturally white hair isn’t common anywhere, but especially not in Japan. One of Shiro’s cousins used to joke that his soulmate must be an alien, because the streak of silver looks more like fire than hair. Shiro never took them seriously, but he’s always wanted to explore the universe, so he took the scholarship and moved to the United States anyways.

And now his soulmate is dying.

Helpless to do anything, Shiro watches as the last bits of silver are swallowed up by black, and waits for the headache to recede as tears drip silently down his cheeks.

Everyone is born with a streak of hair the exact color and texture of their soulmate’s. Soulmates aren’t always romantic, but you always _meet_ them, barring extreme circumstances.

Shiro never thought he would be an extreme circumstance.

~

Carina comes to consciousness the morning of his arrival when the sun rises above the sand dunes and becomes too hot to ignore. He isn’t used to the heat bothering him, but this body is fragile. He knows he’ll need water soon and food, if he can find it. There doesn’t appear to be anything growing out in the desert.

There’s also the matter of finding out what, exactly, he’s become, and if there are any others like him.

Carina stumbles upright, standing unsteadily on the appendages sprouting from his body, and looks down at himself. He has soft, easily breakable skin that’s similar in color to the golden sand, but several shades lighter. There are four appendages branching off from his body, each of them with five smaller appendages branching from them. He can move all of these appendages freely and separately at will, and he spends several minutes simply moving them around and getting a feel for his new body.

When he’s satisfied his curiosity, Carina looks out over the desert. There are mountains to the north and west, and an endless sea of desert to the south and east. He turns himself north and begins a long trek towards the mountains, hoping to find signs of life in that direction.

~

Shiro wakes up the morning after his soulmate’s death curled in fetal position at the foot of his bed. His eyes feel swollen and crusty, and the skin of his cheeks feels rubbed raw. Other than that, he doesn’t feel much of anything. Isn’t it supposed to hurt when a soulmate dies? Isn’t he supposed to _feel_ it?

He gets up and moves through his morning in a daze, wondering if he’s maybe in shock. As he moves through the sterile white halls of his senior dorm building, people stop to stare at him, and he hates that they know what’s happened just by looking at him.

He still doesn’t feel anything by the time he has to go to the third-year flight class he’s an assistant instructor for. Professor Montgomery’s eyes widen when he sees Shiro, but he doesn’t say anything. Shiro is grateful Montgomery at least doesn’t suggest he take a day off, and grits his teeth through the class at the looks the students keep giving him.

One of the girls who’s been starry eyed over Shiro since the first day asks him about the missing streak at the end of class.

Shiro tells her, “My soulmate died last night. Please don’t ask about it,” tonelessly.

She doesn’t ask him about it, but she does ask if she can give him a hug.

Shiro appreciates the sentiment, but declines. The thought of anyone touching him right now makes him feel like throwing up.

He still doesn’t feel anything. Just sick.

~

Carina finds a building in the middle of the desert. It’s old and rotting and looks like it might collapse with a good gust of wind, but Carina finds that it’s sturdier than it looks. He wonders who or what it could have belonged to as he shoulders open the door and stumbles inside. Who would want to live in the middle of a desert with no one else around for miles?

The inside of the shack is empty but for a few wooden furnishings covered in moth-eaten tarps, and a large bookcase in the corner, overflowing with books.

Carina feels curiosity well up inside him, but his stomach protests loudly, demanding food.

Carina searches the shack and finds a hidden stash of non-perishable items in cans and jars, neatly labeled in a language he doesn’t understand. He opens a few and eats them, discovering he likes the ones labeled, “B-E-A-N-S,” containing little brown oblong things that have a smoky flavor, and doesn’t like “J-A-M,” containing a syrupy paste that’s a confusing blend of sweet and tart.

The stash also contains several dozen bottles of water, and Carina finishes off one quickly, and starts on a second one as he turns his attention to the books.

He flips through several, unable to understand the language, but recognizing the pictures and figuring out words by context. He finally pauses on a book filled with pictures and diagrams of aircrafts. He flips through the book more carefully, looking at the words closely and parsing out what they mean. The book talks about aircrafts being used to travel through space and across the world. Carina traces the picture of an aircraft designed for speed and agility and _wants_.

He remembers the fall, and the exhilaration he felt. If he can have that again in this new form, he would do _anything_.

~

Shiro buries himself in his work. He takes on as much of a workload as he can handle and works until he forgets how happy he is.

It’s been months since his soulmate died, and after the initial shock wore off, Shiro still doesn’t feel any grief. He knows he’s supposed to. His family treats him like he’s made of glass and will shatter at the slightest touch. They tiptoe around the topic of his soulmate—around the topic of soulmates in general—as though speaking of it will cause a breakdown.

But Shiro doesn’t feel anything. He enjoys his work, likes the students he works with, likes spending time with his friends. He’s started dating again—a young man who doesn’t put much stock in soulmates. He’s _happy_ , when he doesn’t think of his soulmate and how soul crushingly empty he’s _supposed_ to feel at the loss.

Before he knows it, the school year is ending and it’s been eight months since the white streak turned black. Shiro spends the summer in Japan with his parents and comes back to find that a new upstart has been accepted into the university with a full ride scholarship.

~

Carina spends six months living in the shack and absorbing whatever knowledge he can from the books. He devours every book in the shack about flying and mechanics, and then picks his way through a basic arithmetic textbook, three history books, seven romance novels, and a series of fantasy novels about little people called ‘hobbits’ going on a quest to save the world.

He learns a lot about human customs this way, like how people wear clothes to protect their fragile skin from the elements, how there are different ways of saying things and one is more polite than the others, and how even among humans, there are many different cultures and languages.

He learns about the soulmate phenomenon; how every human is born with a streak of hair the same color and texture of their soulmates. Carina doesn’t have one, as far as he can tell. His hair is all pitch black, except under the light of the moon when it turns a deep, vibrant purple like the color of the sky over the desert during a full moon.

After he’s exhausted all his resources from the shack, Carina takes a map of the desert and compass he found in one of the supply boxes with the food, and walks to the nearest town.

He gets a job at a local gas-station-slash-repair-shop—because apparently humans use a unique currency to pay for items and services—where the owner doesn’t ask questions and is kind enough to let him crash in his empty garage.

During the day, Carina learns how to handle a cash register and count the currency humans use. He spends several hours in the evening sitting with Stephen in the repair shop as the mechanic works on whatever vehicle was brought in that day, and listens to the man talk. He loves those evenings, mostly because he learns how to fix vehicles, but also because he learns more about humans, and about Stephen specifically.

On his days off, Carina wanders around town, watching the people and listening in on conversations, absorbing the music of the language.

Three months in, Carina helps a man get his bike working again, and the man insists on buying him a coffee as thanks. The man introduces himself as Alex Wolff, a flight instructor at Garrison Aeronautical University. Carina can’t hide the way his eyes light up or his enthusiasm when he asks Alex what it’s like to fly.

“Interested in flying, huh, kid?” Alex chuckles.

“The last place I lived had books about aircrafts,” Carina says, by way of explanation.

“That can’t be the only reason,” Alex says with an indulgent smile. “You ever flown before?”

Carina bites his lip, trying to decide how much he can say without revealing the truth. “Once,” he tells the man. “I’ve only flown once before in my life, but it was… the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.”

He ends up spending several hours in the coffee shop with Alex, talking about the ins and outs of aircrafts and spaceships. When Alex starts glancing at his watch, Carina apologizes for taking up his time, recognizing the signs of a person wanting to leave a conversation.

“Don’t apologize,” Alex says. “I gotta go now but… Listen. If you decide you wanna pursue this, go to the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. It costs money to take the exam, but I’ll back you. You’re really smart, and I think you’d do well.”

“Really?” Carina says, already making up his mind and planning all the things he needs to do before taking the test.

“Really.” Alex smiles. “Tell me your name so I know who to look out for.”

“Keith,” Carina says automatically, thinking of the name of Stephen’s son who disappeared over a decade ago. “Keith Kogane.”

He’s accepted into Garrison Aeronautical University three months later with a full ride scholarship, due to his outstanding flight simulation scores and near perfect test scores, the likes of which they haven’t seen since Takashi Shirogane’s entrance exam.

After that, it’s only a matter of time before the two prodigies’ paths cross.

~

Shiro has heard of Keith Kogane, of course. People have been comparing the young man to Shiro since he first appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to blow all of Shiro’s scores out of the water. However, Shiro hasn’t had a chance to properly meet Keith yet, and he isn’t sure what he expects.

According to the rumor mill, Keith is arrogant and aloof, acting like everyone else is beneath him. But when Shiro talks to the loners and outcasts, they cite him as patient and kind, if painfully quiet.

Either way, Shiro looks forward to meeting the prodigy. It will be an interesting experience, whatever the man’s attitude.

Nothing could have prepared him for their meeting, though; finding Keith on the school rooftop, awash in the light of the stars, and gazing up at them with a wistful sort of longing.

It’s the anniversary of Shiro’s soulmates death, and he was planning to spend it with a bottle of wine and no one but the stars for company. He wasn’t expecting anyone else to be there. He’s about to turn back and find a more secluded corner before he notices it’s Keith leaning against the railing with his head tipped back, staring up at the stars.

“I know this isn’t what you wanted for me,” Keith speaks to the sky, voice just barely audible from where Shiro is standing. “But I was never meant to be the center of a universe. I never wanted to be. I wanted to be a comet, and for a brief moment, I _was_. And it was… _everything_.”

Shiro doesn’t understand the words, or who they’re meant for, but he does know the expression on Keith’s face. It’s the same expression he sees on his own face after an exhilarating sim run, one that pushes his skills to the limit and leaves him breathless.

Keith seems to be done talking for the moment, so Shiro quietly steps up to stand at the railing a few feet away.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Keith doesn’t startle at his words, and Shiro assumes Keith knew he was there.

“The stars are the first thing I can ever remember seeing,” Keith replies, his tone awed. “They were there long before I arrived, and they’ll be there long after I’m gone.”

“Is that why you chose to come here?” Shiro asks.

Keith doesn’t reply, but his mouth quirks up slightly at the corner.

“You know about the soulmate thing?” Shiro says, feeling a sudden urge to talk.

Keith looks confused about the shift in topic, but nods.

“I was born with a silver streak, right here.” He touches the lock of hair that bled to black only a year ago. “My cousin liked to joke that my soulmate must have been an alien. I don’t know what I believed, but I hoped I would find them if I came here.”

“What happened?” Keith asks.

“They died,” Shiro whispers. “a year ago today, I remember waking up feeling like my head was on fire and when I looked in the mirror, the white was turning black.”

Keith turns to him fully his eyes wide and mouth hanging open a little, and Shiro startles to find his eyes are luminescent blue in the dark of night. As he stares, the moon comes out from behind the clouds, and the light hits Keith’s hair, turning it a brilliant shade of purple.

“Wha—?”

“A year ago today, I fell to earth,” Keith murmurs, before he blinks and steps back, snapping his mouth shut, his expression closing off.

“I… don’t understand,” Shiro says. “What do you mean?”

Keith only shakes his head before turning tail and running. Shiro doesn’t chase after him, but when he looks in the mirror later that night and sees a streak of galactic purple in his hair where the white once was, he wishes he had.

~

Keith never expected to find a soulmate on Earth. He didn’t think he had one. He had never noticed the streak of hair among the black that didn’t turn purple in the moonlight. But there’s no denying it now; Keith saw the streak of purple in Shiro’s ink black hair.

But Keith also knows that Shiro is dating someone else; that he thinks his soulmate is dead. Keith barely knows Shiro, but already he has an overwhelming desire to make sure the man is safe and happy. Stepping in the middle of a relationship that Shiro has worked for would only make things painful for all parties involved. It’s better if Keith never gets involved at all.

So he runs. He takes the bike he bought with the money he earned working at the gas station and drives into the desert.

Keith feels wild and reckless with a surge of foreign emotion that makes his heart pulse painfully with every beat and his throat clench and choke around every breath. He drives fast, barely keeping control of his bike, taking it around sharp corners and over sand dunes without slowing down.

Eventually, he finds the shack again. Keith steers the bike to the shack with shaking hands, and parks it under the overhang. He stumbles inside, feeling tired and numb, and immediately collapses on the lumpy couch.

Keith doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he dreams of the stars for the first time since he crashed on Earth. He dreams of his Motherstar, who shone with a soft gold light and was revered by all the planets in her system as the gentle matriarch. He dreams of his Fatherstar, who was fierce steel and silver and pulled the planets to him with his unwavering resolve.

…He wants to go home.

~

Keith has disappeared by morning when Shiro goes looking for him. He hears from the security patrol officers that Keith took his motorcycle into town but never came back.

Shiro takes his own car into town and wanders around, looking for Keith’s signature ponytail and red leather jacket. He keeps an eye out for Keith’s eye-catching red and black bike too. He doesn’t see either, and the people he asks haven’t seen Keith or the bike.

Eventually, Shiro has to concede that Keith probably didn’t go into town like he said. If he didn’t want to be found—and Shiro has come to the conclusion that he probably doesn’t—he wouldn’t have done what he told security he was doing. Shiro needs to figure out where Keith would go if he left the University, but there’s no one on campus who’s close to Keith; no one who knows anything about him or his past.

Except… Alex Wolff is the one who recruited Keith and backed his application. He’s the only one who could possibly know where Keith went.

“The authorities are already looking,” Alex says when Shiro asks, his eyes weary and the lines on his face profound.

“It’s been two days,” Shiro begs. “Have they found anything yet?”

“Why do you want to know?” Alex’s eyes narrow suspiciously.

Shiro bites his lip, debating. “He’s my soulmate,” Shiro says finally. “I only just found out the other night, but then he ran.”

Alex’s eyes widen just slightly, betraying his surprise. “Everyone knows your soulmate’s hair was white,” Alex says, but he doesn’t sound disbelieving. “It turned black a year ago, when your soulmate died.”

“That’s what I thought too,” Shiro says. “But I saw Keith on the roof last night, and his hair looks purple in the moonlight. My streak was the same color. _Only_ my streak.”

Alex presses his lips into a thin line and gives Shiro a hard, searching look. Finally, he says, “The person with the name Keith Kogane has been dead for fifteen years. According to records, the Keith Kogane who applied to the university doesn’t exist.”

_A year ago today, I fell to earth_.

That’s what Keith said. Shiro still doesn’t understand the meaning, but now he has another piece of the puzzle.

“Is there anything at all you can tell me about where he might have gone?” Shiro asks. “Fake name aside, he’s still my soulmate.”

“I already told the police everything I know about him,” Alex says. “What makes you think you can do any better finding him?”

“I don’t know,” Shiro says. “But I have to try.”

Alex hums, seeming pleased with the answer. “When I first met Keith, he was working at a gas station that doubled as a car repair shop in Tempe. He fixed my bike and we got to talking. The gas station was Firebird Fuel, and the adjoining repair shop was Kogane Mechanics. I can give you the address, but I don’t know much more than that. The owner of the shop is Stephen Kogane. I’ve never spoken to him, I always just assumed Keith was a relative.”

“Thank you,” Shiro says, breathless with hope.

~

Keith drives to Tempe the third day at the shack for food and water. He buys a months’ worth of groceries at the supermarket he used to go to when he lived with Stephen and then stops at the bookstore to pick up a few more books to keep him entertained at the shack. He drives past the gas station on his way out of town and nearly crashes his bike into a streetlamp when he sees Shiro talking to Stephen in the garage.

Keith stomps on the gas and speeds away before either of them notices him, his heart hammering.

_What is he doing here?_ Shiro should still be in Phoenix, not in Tempe and _definitely_ not talking to Keith’s former employer turned pseudo parent.

Stephen is the only one who got close enough to discover the truth about Keith. If he tells Shiro… Keith remembers a sci-fy movie where humans discovered aliens living amongst them and captured them to do horrifying experiments on. He knows it’s not real, but it _is_ real that humans are _really_ cruel sometimes.

Keith drives as fast as he can back to the shack, unloading his groceries and trying to shake the uneasy feeling that’s settled over him. He feels itchy and insecure in the shack now, where before he felt at peace. He wants to leave, but there’s no where else to go.

But he also can’t stay here, where he feels more cornered than secure. So Keith hops on his bike again and drives south without any real direction in mind.

~

“I’m looking for this man,” Shiro says, holding out a picture of Keith to the gas station owner.

Stephen takes a drag of his cigarette and breathes the smoke into Shiro’s face. “Mighta seen him,” he says noncommittally.

“He goes by Keith Kogane,” Shiro says, suppressing the urge to snap. “I was told he worked here before applying for the university.”

“You’re not the first person to come ‘round here asking for him,” Stephen says. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told the cops; I ain’t seen the boy since mid-August.”

“Please,” Shiro begs, “don’t you have any information on where he could’ve gone?”

Stephen’s eyes narrow; Shiro’s been getting that expression a lot lately. “Why do you want to know?”

“He’s my soulmate.”

Stephen eye’s Shiro’s hair. “How’d you figure that?”

“His hair looks purple in the moonlight,” Shiro explains, feeling frustrated and impatient. “I have a streak of hair that does the same thing.”

Stephen takes another drag of his cigarette, the smoke briefly obscuring his expression. “Keith Kogane is the name of my son,” he says finally. “The boy you’re looking for is Carina. I don’t know for sure where he’s at now, but when he came here, he told me he’d been living in a shack straight west of here.”

Stephen flicks the butt of his cigarette to the ground, crushing it with his heel as he turns and retreats to his workbench in the garage.

Shiro practically sprints back to his car, barely remembering his manners long enough to say, “Thank you,” and get a, “Good luck,” in return.

He peels out of the parking lot, heading for the west end of town and setting his GPS to keep him going west as he drives into the desert. The sand will be hell on his tires and engine, but Shiro could care less at the moment about his car.

Sand and dust billows behind him as Shiro speeds through the desert, a speck on the horizon growing bigger and bigger with every mile that’s swept behind him, transforming into a hovel in the middle of the desert. Shiro can’t see the bright red of Keith’s motorcycle, even as he gets closer, and there aren’t a lot of places he could have hidden it, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there.

Shiro pulls up in front of the shack, eyeing the way the whole building is leaning slightly to the left, as though it could slump over at any minute. He cautiously steps onto the front porch, avoiding the hole in the second step, and tests the door handle.

The door swings open surprisingly easily, and Shiro steps inside the shack. The inside is better kept than the outside suggests, beat up wooden furniture cluttering the main room, a bundle of moth-eaten sheets in the corner, a door leading to a small bedroom in which Shiro can see a mattress and rumpled bedsheets. There’s a small kitchen area in the northeast corner of the room, closest to the door, and there’s a small pile of groceries still in their bags next to the fridge, proof that someone has been here recently.

Shiro doesn’t need to do much snooping to find a bag of clothes and textbooks in the bedroom—Keith’s red leather jacket and a book that Shiro recognizes from the astronomy course among the meager possessions.

Keith’s been here in the last twenty-four hours, even if he’s not now. He’ll have to come back at some point, Shiro just has to wait.

~

Keith finds the shell of his former body after over four hours of driving aimlessly through the desert.

The cracked and empty husk is almost entirely covered by sand, only a few jagged pieces poking out from beneath the sand. Keith kneels in the dust and digs his hands into the sand, sweeping it out of the way, trying to dig out as much as he can.

Keith feels a sharp lance of pain in the palm of his right hand and he yanks it out of the sand with a sharp cry, turning it over to see blood pouring out of a jagged wound. Cradling the injured hand against his chest, Keith sweeps the sand out of the way far more carefully, uncovering a sharp piece of glittering rock that must have broken off from the rest of the meteoroid.

Keith carefully picks up the rock, turning it over in his hand, admiring the way it sparkles in the fading light of the sun. He feels far more settled after coming here, though he couldn’t explain why. Perhaps it’s simply the reminder of why he left that life in the first place. Whatever the reason, if Shiro’s come looking for him, Keith knows he owes him an explanation. Even with the fear of getting hurt—emotionally more than physically—Shiro is his soulmate, and he deserves to know what he’s been saddled with if he wants to know.

Keith slips the rock into his pocket, and carefully rips a strip of fabric off of the bottom of his shirt to wrap around his injured hand and keep more sand and dust from getting into it than there already is. Keith knows he’ll have to wash it out and properly bandage it when he gets home, but after that, he’s going to get in contact with Shiro.

Keith climbs back on his bike and directs himself towards the shack, using his internal compass to keep him going in the right direction.

It’s full-on night by the time Keith pulls up next to the shack, his heart thumping with trepidation at the sight of another car parked alongside it. He hopes it’s Stephen, come to check on him after his conversation with Shiro, but the car is too new to be one of Stephen’s.

He pads quietly onto the deck and pushes the door open silently. The first thing he notices is that his groceries have been put away, leaving a pile of empty bags by the door. Then Keith turns towards the couch and sees a figure halfway sitting, sprawled on the couch. Keith knows without looking to closely that it’s Shiro, having fallen asleep waiting for him.

With an amused huff that might be resignation, Keith steps over to his soulmate, gently placing his non-injured hand on Shiro’s shoulder to shake him awake.

Shiro startles awake at the touch, shooting fully upright, eyes wide, and grabbing Keith by the wrist to keep him from stepping back.

“ _Keith_ ,” Shiro breathes, sounding awed.

“Shiro,” Keith responds, his voice hushed in the dark. “Let me light a candle and clean my hand, and then we’ll talk. I owe you an explanation.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Shiro counters. “Wait, what happened to your hand?”

Keith waves away his concerns, stepping through the bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom, unwrapping the cloth from his hand as he goes.

He can feel Shiro following him, unwilling to let him out of his sight lest he disappear again, so he says, “If you came all the way out here looking for me, I assume you know I’m your soulmate.”

“Yes,” Shiro says without preamble. “But that can wait. You’re bleeding a lot.”

“It’s fine,” Keith says. “I heal quickly, I just need to wash the sand out of it. Why are you here?”

Shiro huffs a sigh. “You ran away,” he says. “I _just_ found you, and then you were gone again.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith says, hissing as the cold water stings his wound. “I was afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?” Shiro asks, leaning against the doorframe, keeping his eyes on Keith’s hand as he lathers soap on it and then uses a pair of tweezers to carefully pick bits of sand out of the wound. “How are you doing that without a light?”

“I have good eyesight.”

Shiro waits until Keith shuts off the water and carefully dries his hands, bandaging the right hand with a strip of gauze from the first aid kit under the sink to say, “You never answered my first question.”

“Forgot,” Keith mutters, using his teeth to rip the tape and secure the bandage in place. “What was your question again?”

“What are you afraid of?”

Keith bites his lip and fiddles with the first aid kit. He knows he’s stalling, but words are _hard_ , and he doesn’t know how to verbalize what he’s afraid of. With a sigh he puts the kit away and turns to face Shiro who steps back to allow Keith to step through the bathroom door. As he steps past, Keith notes Shiro’s eyes—which looked silver in the light of the moon that night on the roof—are almost black in the darkness of the shack.

“Keith?” Shiro calls, as Keith walks back into the main room to find a candle in the cupboards.

“Let me light a candle,” Keith answers, taking one of the nicer pine-scented candles out of the cupboard and finding the lighter in the junk drawer.

He lights it and brings it back to the couch, setting it on one of the boxes that serves for a coffee table.

Shiro sits down on one side of the couch, angling himself towards Keith, and fixes him with an expectant look. Keith sits down on the other side of the couch, breathing out heavily and takes a moment to gather his thoughts.

“How much did Stephen tell you?”

“That your name isn’t really Keith Kogane,” Shiro replies, a touch accusingly. “Hang on, how did you know I talked to Stephen?”

Keith shrugs. “Saw you with him on my way out of town this afternoon,” he says. “It’s why I wasn’t here when you got here. I got scared and… ran.”

“What are you so scared of?” Shiro asks, voice barely above a whisper, like he knows and expects Keith to dodge the question again, but has to try anyways.

“You… remember what I said on the roof, right?” Keith asks. When Shiro nods, he continues, “I said I came to Earth a year ago. Before that… I wasn’t human.”

“Wasn’t?” Shiro asks. “Does that mean you _are_ human now?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“Holy shit,” Shiro laughs, and Keith looks at him, startled. “Ryu got it right all along, he’s never gonna let me hear the end of it.”

“What do you mean?” Keith asks, feeling almost hurt by this weird turn of events.

“My cousin, Ryu, used to joke that my soulmate was an alien because white is such an unusual color,” Shiro explains.

“I’m not an alien,” Keith states flatly. “I never was. I was a star.”

Shiro blinks at him. “Like… a giant ball of gas and fire?” he asks.

“If that’s how you wanna define it, sure,” Keith says.

“Woah.”

“I guess I’m probably not what you expected, huh,” Keith says, looking away from Shiro and wrapping his arms protectively around his torso.

“Not really, no,” Shiro admits. “But I don’t really know _what_ I was expecting, honestly. Especially since, for the last year, I’ve thought my soulmate was dead and I’d _never_ meet them.”

“Listen,” Keith says, drawing a deep breath but still refusing to look at Shiro. “I know you’re already dating someone, and you’re happy with them, and I don’t want to get in the way of that. I don’t expect anything from you, that’s why I left. I’m not… I don’t belong here, and you didn’t sign up for this. For _me_. So if you wanted something normal… I wouldn’t blame you. I just—” Keith cuts himself off when he feels Shiro’s skin hot palm wrap around his wrist, startled out of his tirade by unfamiliar human contact.

“First of all,” Shiro says, his eyes dark and serious, “no one _signs up_ for their soulmate. You don’t get to choose the other half of your soul. Second, what Adam and I have is comfortable, and easy… but it’s not what I was looking for. When I found out my soulmate was alive, when I found out it was _you_ … there are no words to describe how happy that made me. This is something I’ve been looking for my whole life, and I’m not about to let it get away from me now that its within reach.”

There’s a deep ache in Keith’s heart that feels like relief and something sad all at once, and he can’t help the way tears bubble up and spill out of his eyes. Shiro makes a mournful sound and then there are strong arms wrapped around Keith’s shoulders and his face is pressed against Shiro’s chest, his heartbeat thundering in Keith’s ear.

“I’m sorry I made you afraid of this,” Shiro says.

Keith laughs wetly, pressing his face more comfortably into Shiro’s neck. “I’m sorry I ran,” he says.

Shiro doesn’t say anything, but the way his arms tighten around Keith means everything. He finally feels at home.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. That is a thing. That I wrote.
> 
> I feel like I'm just screaming into the void at this point (does anyone even READ the author notes anymore?) but PLEASE leave kudos and comments if you liked this!! And if you have any constructive criticism (that does NOT include anything about the Sheith ship) please comment! I'm always looking to improve my writing!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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